Republicans in the majority in the U.S. House last week released a report documenting the evidence of what appears to be a massive worldwide “pay-for-play” scheme run by the Biden family.
Biden family members, according to bank records, took in some $10 million while Joe Biden was vice president – while providing no discernible goods or services to the foreign interests providing the cash.
But American legacy and social media industries essentially ignored the scandal. Some provided no reporting on the issue at all. Others spun it to favor the Bidens, claiming GOP admitted there’s no evidence against him.
And that has moved into a dangerous territory, according to Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at Georgia Washington University. He’s been a witness before Congress multiple times on legal issues and even has represented the U.S. House in court.
He cited the Pulitzer Prize given to New York Times reporter Walter Duranty 100 years ago for covering the Soviet Union – as an apologist for Joseph Stalin, when Duranty refused to report on the mass killings and instead claimed “Russians Hungry but Not Starving.”
The media’s handling of the scandalous Biden family results is worse, Turley said.
“Today we are seeing a much more dangerous phenomenon. The coverage this week has all the markings of a state media. The consistent spin. The almost universal lack of details. The absurd distinctions,” Turley wrote.
“It is the blindside of our First Amendment, which addresses the classic use of state authority to coerce and control media. It does not address a circumstance in which most of the media will maintain an official line by consent rather than coercion.”
State media in repressive countries, especially communist nations, reports only what the government in power allows to be reported.
Turley cited the evidence on the Bidens released by Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., and others.
He, Turley wrote, “tried to do the impossible. After he and his colleagues presented a labyrinth of LLC shell companies and accounts used to funnel as much as $10 million to Biden family members, Donalds tried to induce the press to show some interest in the massive corruption scandal. ‘For those in the press, this is easy pickings & Pulitzer-level stuff right here,’ he pleaded.”
The legacy media response was typified by the New Republic, he said, which headlined its comments on the Bidens: “Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden.”
That, Turley said, “was otherworldly. A decade ago, when then-Vice President Joe Biden was denouncing corruption in Romania and Ukraine and promising action by the United States, massive payments were flowing to his son Hunter Biden and a variety of family members, including Biden grandchildren.”
He continued:
Last year, I wrote a column about how the media were preparing a difficult “scandal implosion” to protect the Bidens and themselves from the backlash from disclosures of this influence peddling operation.
The brilliance of the Biden team was that it invested the media in this scandal at the outset by burying the laptop story as “Russian disinformation” before the election. That was, of course, false, but it took two years for most major media outlets to admit that the laptop was authentic.
But the media then ignored what was on that “authentic laptop.” Hundreds of emails detailed potentially criminal conduct and raw influence peddling in foreign countries.
When media outlets such as the New York Post confirmed the emails, the media then insisted that there was no corroboration of the influence peddling payments and no clear proof of criminal conduct. It entirely ignored the obvious corruption itself.
He said the legacy media’s defense of the Biden is “laughably absurd.”
“The payments were going to his family, but he was the object of the influence peddling,” he wrote.
He pointed out the evidence showing payments – of millions – was going to “at least nine Bidens like dividends from family business.”
“As a long-time critic of influence peddling among both Republicans and Democrats, I have never seen the equal of the Bidens,” he said. “The whole purpose of influence peddling is to use family members as shields for corrupt officials. Instead of making a direct payment to a politician, which could be seen as a bribe, you can give millions to his or her spouse or children.
“Moreover, these emails include references to Joe Biden getting a 10 percent cut of one Chinese deal. It also shows Biden associates warning not to use Joe Biden’s name but to employ code names like ‘the Big Guy.’ At the same time, the president and the first lady are referenced as benefiting from offices and receiving payments from Hunter,” he explained.
Turley accused media outlets all of trying for the “Duranty Pulitzer.”
.”
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
This post originally appeared on WND News Center.